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Course-Related Links

J.L. Austin and How to Do Things with Words

• J.L. Austin—the J.L. Austin page in Garth Kemerling’s Philosophy Pages.
• John Langshaw Austin—a brief entry in the Columbia Encyclopedia.
• J. L. Austin: Key Concepts—Notes on Austin’s How to Do Things with Words—a fairly useful list of terms introduced and defined by Austin in How to Do Things with Words, compiled by Warren Hedges from the English Department at Southern Oregon University.

Speech Act Theory and Some Relevant History

• Speech Acts—the article on speech acts by Kent Bach from the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Note that this piece isn’t anything like a mere précis of Austin’s views. Indeed, a number of criticisms of Austin’s theory and alternatives to Austin’s are discussed in it.
• Speech Act—the article on the term “speech act” in the Wikipedia, with links to discussions in the Wikipedia of many related terms.
• Towards a History of Speech Act Theory—an extremely interesting article on Austin’s precursors in speech act theory by Barry Smith, Department of Philosophy, SUNY Buffalo.
• Logical Positivism and Analytic Philosophy—a useful description on the Radical Academy site of the movements that constitute the immediate historical background of Austin’s work. Note that the article goes on for three pages—links available at both the top and the bottom of the page.

Speech Acts from the Point of View of Contemporary Linguistics

• What Is a Speech Act?—the treatment in the LinguaLinks Library. Based on writings by John Searle and David Crystal.

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